ACTING

MIUR Acting Academies

The Academic Diploma Course Programs in Acting at the International Theatre Academy are structured around predominantly practical teachings complemented by theoretical lessons to support academic training.

Modern Theater and the Theater of the 20th Century

THEATER OF THE 20TH CENTURY

Between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, we witness the transition from classical theater to modern theater, that is, from a word-based theater to one focused more on physical action, on gesture. The birth of psychoanalysis with Freud paves the way for Stanislavski's theoretical work, centered on the actor's interpretative emotion. Alongside the classic figures of the theater, that of the actor and the author, a new figure emerges that will soon become central: the director.
With the affirmation of the historical avant-gardes, new forms of theater are born such as Artaud's "theater of cruelty," Brecht's "epic theater," and, in the second half of the century, Beckett's and Ionesco's "theater of the absurd," which radically change the approach to staging and pave a new way for theater, already opened by authors of the caliber of Cocteau, Strindberg, Ibsen, and Chekhov, not to forget Jarry who breaks the patterns of bourgeois theater with "Ubu Roi."
We will analyze the works and the work of the different authors who have contributed to this theatrical evolution.

A. CHEKHOV

• "Indirect action"
• Character connotation as a "fixed" tool
• Importance of the psychological detail of characters
• Scenic tension and search for harmony
• Relationship between realism and symbolism

H. IBSEN

• The “b curtain”
• Characters built on the contradiction between capacity and ambition
• The inevitability of fate
• Action as an inner memory detached from the present
• Impossibility of integration between the artist and society at any time

A. STRINDBERG

• Naturalism
• Breaking the symmetry of dialogues
• Multiplicity of psychological characteristics of characters
• Drama as a reflection of consciousness
• The “Intima Teater”

V. MAYAKOVSKY

• Verbal and visual games
• Poetic hyperbolism
• "Functional" art, devoid of any aestheticizing psychologism
• "Self-description"

F. GARCÍA LORCA

• Theme of dream and escape
• Blood, death, and fertility
• Modern tragedy: the sacrifice
• Relationship between symbolism and surrealism
• Conjunction between myth and poetry

L. PIRANDELLO

• The "mirror theater"
• Theater within theater: deconstruction of dramatic structures
• Breaking the fourth wall
• Incommunicability, loneliness, inauthentic communication
• Difference between "comic" and "humor"

O. WILDE

• Aesthetic doctrine
• Critique of Victorian society
• Word prevails over action
• Nature imitates Art
• The Aphorism

J. GENET

• Being and Appearance - Image and Reality
• The artifice of theatrical representation
• Modern tragedy: victims and executioners
• Beauty and the sublime in sordidness
• Objective action - subjective fantasy

F. DÜRRENMATT

• Demystification of historical judgment
• The distorting stylization
• Tangible sense of reality
• Virtuoso manipulation of the grotesque
• Sarcastic and ironic nonconformity

E. O’NEILL

• Denunciation of corruption, disintegration, and alienation of civilization
• Dominant fatalism
• Expressionism
• The "mystic cycle"
• Use of Freudian theories

T. WILLIAMS

• The psychological ghost
• From obsessive imagery to theatrical writing
• The grotesque in romantic aesthetics
• Crisis as truth

A. MILLER

• Relationship with classical tragedy
• Social critique
• Psychology and sociology
• Morality and redemption

P.P. PASOLINI

• Myth of the urban underclass
• From the Theater of words to the Theater of reality
• Poetry, Theater, and Cinema
• Rejection of traditional techniques

The Historical Avant-Gardes

AVANT-GARDE THEATER

Expressionism, Abstractism, Futurism, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism are just some of the artistic movements, commonly referred to as “avant-gardes,” that characterized the early 20th century. Questions are raised about the role of the artist in society, leading to a questioning of the very concept of art by breaking every past canon in the name of claimed freedom of expression. There’s no sociological field that hasn't been touched by the wave of renewal from the avant-gardes: from technology to politics, and obviously including culture.
At the center of the discussion is always the theme of incommunicability, a product of a fast and cruel century that has sacrificed its humanity on the altar of progress. Theater has been particularly influenced by the currents of Futurism and Surrealism: the dramatic elements, pushed beyond logic, touch on the sense of mystery and human limit.
Starting from Jarry up to the works of Cocteau and Artaud, we move in a game of mirrors where farce responds to drama, tragedy to comedy, reality to fantasy.
Characters are exaggerated and alternate between exacerbated cruelty and a diffused irony. Illogical circumstances are upheld by extremely lucid texts and, conversely, everyday situations on the edge of banality are inhabited by characters and dialogues totally illogical. The result is a surprising, almost supernatural effect.

A. JARRY

• Elimination of the psychological dimension of characters
• Reduction of psychological processes to purely egocentric ones
• Breaking of logical connections as the language of the plot and action
• Mixing of styles
• Dehumanization and puppet-like mechanization of characters

J. COCTEAU

• Interaction between music, dance, theater, painting, sculpture
• Use of the first technological forms in dramaturgy
• Relationship between plastic arts and representation
• Dadaist and surrealist elements

A. ARTAUD

• The "Theater of Cruelty"
• Fusion of gesture, movement, light, and word
• Evocative power of the sound of words
• Creation of a scenic language

J. COPEAU

• Pure theatrical forms
• The actor as interpretive honesty
• Bare stage
• Rhythmic space, movement, and vision
• Tradition of birth

EPIC THEATER

The role that theater carves out in modern society is primarily that of a mirror and a warning to humanity, no longer a place of mere entertainment but a driver of changes and of new ideologies. It is on this wave that, at the end of the '30s, Brecht develops an original form of theater, which he will define as epic theater, aimed not to provoke emotion, but to stimulate reasoning. The audience should not be subjected to suggestions that favor identification with this or that character, but should instead be faced with arguments that stimulate critical judgment.
To achieve this effect of lucid detachment, called “alienation,” a particular acting technique is adopted, based on a central role of narration, on an acting often interrupted by reflections and comments that lead the actors themselves to be both inside and outside the story being portrayed, and especially on the use of didascalias, songs, and signs that interrupt the plot, thus avoiding involvement in psychological conflicts and the relationship between characters.
This “cooling”, assimilates Brecht's poetics to the “New Objectivity” and to the messages of violent denunciation that Georg Grosz elaborates in his works during the same years.

B. BRECHT

• Application of the basic canons of epic dramaturgy
• Rejection of a predetermined theatrical theme
• Characters presented in their stark carnality and outside of any psychologism
• Attitude of cold presentation and verification of the facts dealt with
• Technique of “alienation”
• The global work of art

THEATER AND VISUAL ARTS

After a careful analysis of the major artistic movements of the 20th century, from Realism to Expressionism, from Futurism to Surrealism, the study will focus on the relationship between “visual art” and “representative art”. How to stage a painting? How to reinterpret forms, colors, and characters? How to represent an environment and space? Which texts and poems integrate with the image? Which music? A fascinating work of comprehensive composition, seeking an expressive quality of word and movement, capable of staging an atmosphere, a color, a light, thus shaping Van Gogh's tormented brushstrokes, Chagall's dreamy violets, Picasso's decisive strokes.
Finally, the students will present various paintings, in a non-random sequence of scenic pictures whose poetic climax will precisely be the transition from one image to the other.

The Theater of the Absurd

Artistic research on the great themes of our era, the inability to communicate, loneliness, alienation, brutality, skepticism, leads to very different interpretive methodologies that however share an unreal poetic dimension representing the existential void of modern man.
With the emotional value eliminated, the gesture undergoes a profound transformation becoming mechanical and, in the repetition of the mechanical, absurd.
Free from any pre-established convention and from having to represent a meaning coherent with reality, even language becomes a fragmented set of meanings whose only message is the lack of communication and nonsense.
After a period of experimentation on characters and dialogues of the theater of the absurd, and a series of improvisations on surreal settings, the students will practice on multiple theatrical pieces, taken from the works of the main authors of the “avant-gardes,” emphasizing each time the writing and interpretative mechanisms that characterize the research of the authors considered.

S. BECKETT

• Objectification of the absurd
• Emptiness of gesture and word
• Characters as "anti-heroes"
• Incommunicability
• Absence of memory
• Immobility of time
• Transformation of detail into event through temporal distortion

E. IONESCO

• Break between individual and reality
• The "nonsense"
• Progressive invasion of madness in the character
• Transition from the burlesque to the tragic
• The unreality of the real
• The banal language
• Dislocation of common and everyday language
• Expressing emptiness through the language of words and gestures

G. PEREC

• Constrained writing
• Style exercises
• Lipograms, palindromes, heterograms
• The Fragment
• Significance of the signifier over the meaning

R. QUENEAU

• Creation approach based on the unconscious, on the random juxtaposition of objects, and on dreams
• Combining elements of works according to mathematical calculation and play
• Predetermination of the elements of a work
• Mathematics as a source of inspiration in literary field

H. PINTER

• "Comedies of menace"
• Tense dialogues, precise rhythms, and silences as a line
• Humor as a vehicle for anguish
• "Comedies of memory"
• Social Theater

THE BAUHAUS - MOVING SCENOGRAPHIES

The theater of the Bauhaus was born with strong ideological premises from the ideas of director Erwin Piscator and stage architect Walter Gropius, founders of a collective project, the "Bauhaus" which in the '20s and '30s gathered the best talents from Europe in the fields of design, applied arts, and architecture.
Based on the idea of a similarity between the art of construction and the scenic art, the Bauhaus theater constructs geometric forms around the actor's body, in relation to space, through flexible structures, projections, and lighting effects. Thus, the "dramatic" role of scenography, materials, their influence on the scene, and interpretation will be experimented. Objects, taken and "reversed", their shapes overturned and flipped in meaning, take on a new expressive potential. The work on the architecture of the scenic space is the basis of an interesting research that the school continues at various levels: from its most elementary forms to complex moving scenographies created by advanced class students.

ABSURDITY IN CINEMA: THE MONTY PYTHON

How does the comedic mechanism of the "theater of the absurd" change when the audience's eye is a camera? What changes in comedic timing, acting, body, facial expressiveness? How to interpret characters that do not possess a true "psychological identity"? Once again, the study path focuses on the difference, within the same style, between theatrical and cinematic interpretation.
This time our references will be "The Monty Python", one of the most irreverent teams in English cinema. After viewing part of their filmography, the students will be asked to conceive and perform sketches on absurdity and nonsense, using, with due precautions, a specifically cinematic language.
The theater/cinema study path is at its third stage: from the realism of characters in the 1st year, to Shakespearean acting in the 2nd year, to the alteration, absence, and paradox of the surreal and nonsense characters.

Monty Python Filmography

- And Now For Something Completely Different (1971)
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
- Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979)
- The Meaning of Life (1983)
- A Fish Called Wanda (directed by Charles Crichton, with Kevin Kline, John Cleese, J. Lee Curtis 1988)

Additional Filmography

- Young Frankenstein (directed by M. Brooks, with Gene Wilder 1975)
- Hellzapoppin' (directed by Henry C. Potter 1941)

Modern Comedy

The approach to "Modern Comedy" involves the study and reworking of works by contemporary theater authors.

E. DE FILIPPO

The study of De Filippo's works inevitably refers to the themes and improvisation techniques of the Commedia dell’Arte, but here the character, losing the instinctive animality of the mask, takes on a psychological connotation. De Filippo's characters are somehow "fixed types" born from the realistic observation of the Italian society of the first half of the 19th century and represent the "tragedy" of modern man at the mercy of the conflict between individual and society.

• Directing treated as an integral part of the text
• Psychological connotation of "type" characters as exemplary models
• Classic narrative structure - Use of the chorus
• Revisiting the themes and improvisation technique of the Commedia dell’Arte and Farce

E. LABICHE

Labiche's characters, on the other hand, are "bourgeois masks," caricatural portraits set in purely everyday dynamics. The character always moves on a dual level: between what he is and what he wants to appear as. Thus, the comedy arises from the plot's intertwining and the complicit relationship with the audience.

• Comedy of "movement" as opposed to comedy of "punchline"
• Liveliness of the character
• The tastes, troubles, vices of the petty bourgeois spirit
• Use of fixed rules in comedy

M. FRAYN

The journey continues with Michael Frayn's comedies. In his work, almost all comic mechanisms are found: farcical plays, comedy of characters and counter-characters, repetition, catchphrase, double entendre of the punchline, situational comedy, backstage, metatheater, absurd, dysfunction, gag, misunderstanding, clown reactions, etc. For the students, it will be an excellent gym, to test the knowledge acquired over time on comic theater.

• Theater within theater
• Situational comedy - Repetition comedy
• The "backstage"
• Rhythm and musicality of character/counter-character
• The double entendre of the punchline

R. COONEY, P. SHAFFER, N. SIMON, M. HENNEQUIN

The work of these playwrights exemplifies the type of comedy based on the typical elements of farce: mistaken identity, situational misunderstandings, showcasing vices and flaws of society through the reaction of paradoxical situations and characters, spicy comedy.

• Reference to "Vaudeville"
• Misunderstandings and double entendres
• Twists and paradoxical situations
• Role exchange of characters

COMEDY AND CINEMA

In conclusion of this period of study, we will focus on the different nuances of comedy, exploring its cinematic offshoots: "noir" and typically English humour, the brilliant comedy, the farcical comedy, the grotesque genre, focusing on cinematic screenplays and the consistency of characters' identification.
The selected films are almost all "choral" narratives, involving multiple characters, each with their own preceding circumstances. Revisiting the Strasberg Method technique, students will propose original and personalized versions of the analyzed films, developing both theatrical and cinematic interpretations.

Filmography

Noir
- To Catch a Thief (directed by A. Hitchcock, with Cary Grant 1955)
- The Trouble with Harry (directed by A. Hitchcock, with S. MacLaine 1956)
- Murder by Death (directed by R. Moore, with P. Falk, P. Sellers 1976)
- Arsenic and Old Lace (directed by F. Capra, with C. Grant, P. Lane 1944)
- 8 Women (directed by F. Ozon with C. Deneuve 2002)

Grotesque
- La Grande Bouffe (directed by M. Ferreri, with U. Tognazzi, M. Mastroianni, P. Noiret 1973)
- The Last New Year's Eve (directed by M. Risi, with A. Haber, M. Bellucci, P. Natoli 1998)
- Parenti Serpenti (directed by M. Monicelli with A. Haber, A. Cenci, M. Confalone, P. Panelli 1992)
- Ugly, Dirty and Bad (directed by E. Scola, with N. Manfredi 1976)
- The Common Wealth (directed by Álex de la Iglesia with C Maura 2000)
- The Celebration (directed by T. Vinterberg 1998)
- Carnage (directed by R. Polański with J. Foster, K. Winslet, and C. Waltz 2011)

Brilliant Comedy/Farce
- Noises Off (directed by P. Bogdanovich, with M. Caine, C. Reeve 1992)
- Death at a Funeral (directed by F. Oz, with M. Macfadyen, R. Graves 2007)
- Barefoot in the Park (directed by G. Saks, with R. Redford, J. Fonda 1967)
- Le Prénom (directed by A. de La Patellière and M. Delaporte with P. Bruel 2012)

Character Study - Comic and Dramatic Texts

At this point in the journey, having acquired acting techniques based on styles and developed greater acting skills, it's necessary to deepen the study of character through the analysis and learning of both dramatic and comic texts regardless of the style. This way, the student will confront monologues and dialogues surpassing the stylistic limit and experimenting in acting the unity and organicity of the theatrical material. The texts chosen for this path are taken from: “The Just Assassins” and “State of Siege” by A. Camus, “The Jewish Wife” by B. Brecht, “A Conversation at Night with a Despised Man” by F. Dürrenmatt, “Life is a Dream” by V. Calderón, “Mary Stuart” by F. Schiller, “The Message of Jehanne”, “Mozart and the Gray Steward”, “Nascuntur Poetae” and “Orlando Came to the Tower” by T. Wilder, ”A Streetcar Named Desire”, by T. Williams, “The Anniversary” and “The Lover” by H. Pinter, “The Indifferent One” by J. Cocteau, “Small Crimes” by E. Schmitt and “The Belvedere” and “Long Live the Queen” by A. Nicolaj.

Satire and Parody in Contemporary Times

CARTOONS AND COMICS

White pantomime techniques are applied to the study of Cartoons and Comics where the actor, losing any verbal crutch, is forced to a communication made of immediately readable frames and onomatopoeic sounds. The most famous superheroes, with their scenic transformation of spaces, the vital and frenetic impulses, the clean gesture, are nothing but the futuristic and caricatural transposition of tragic heroes and the “fixed types” of the art tradition.
Comic pantomime - Gesture language - Onomatopoeic sound effects - Timing of the "gag" - Illusion of spaces, objects, and characters - Study of caricatures - Mechanics of comic characters - Caricatural deformations in "speech".

MODERN JESTER AND PARODY

From the encounter of the jester with modernity arises a character who brings all his irreverence and critical force not through physical deformations but through mental and behavioral ones: the modern jester. By completely blending in with well-known and esteemed characters of modern society, he will expose vices and hidden intentions. Initially, students will practice with credible imitations of different speaking rhythms: from sports commentators to news reporters, from the hammering TV journalists to the host of a talk show, a fashion show, a cooking show, up to the exasperated screams of the most grating teleshopping. Then, once the speech has been exercised, the ways of acting, appearing, mannerisms, and psychological peculiarities of public figures for which they will construct a shrewd parody will be studied.

SOCIAL SATIRE

This phase of study is based on the sociological observation of new media: on the messages it conveys, on the subliminal manipulations that alter values and behavioral models, on the profound social dysfunction they bring with them. Satire applied to television screen products, news and sports broadcasts, quizzes, telenovelas, and advertisements, creates a particular form of human comedy.
In the creation of “situation sketches,” the starting point is imitative technique and the decomposition of movement in an attempt to reproduce camera movements: a “fade,” a “replay,” a “go back,” a “slow motion,” an “accelerated,” a “zoom,” a “hammering zapping”; later, based on the multiple improvisations and on the scripts developed by the students themselves, the satirical play is added through the derisory mechanisms of paradox, thus transforming the stage into a delirious and biting screen.

 

USE OF VOICE / VOICE TRAINING

3rd Year

This phase of study develops knowledge of one's vocal identity and its directed development towards theatricality. Work will be conducted on the rhythm of breathing, the gesture of the phrase, and the laws governing the relationship between breath and the projection of the voice in space. In the third year, students apply vocal and phonetic techniques to challenging interpretations linked to texts from the theater of the Absurd based on the incoherence of logical sense and on a fragmentary, automated, schizophrenic language that requires particular vocal virtuosities. Moreover, in parodic interpretations and social satire, practice is geared towards the analysis and reproduction of particular styles of language and speech rhythms.

VOCAL TRAINING

• Deformations: falsetto, guttural, altered voices
• Sound dramatic scores: obsessive and circular repetition of text
• Study of Onomatopoeia and sound effects
• Language in the absurd: fragmentation, schizophrenia, incoherence
• Breakdown and transformation of sentiment in speech
• Speech in satire: sports commentators, presenters, announcers, etc.
• Elevated and vulgar language
• Invented, deformed, improper words
• Verbal automatism, assonances, dragging of assonances

 

PHYSICAL TRAINING / FELDENKRAIS METHOD / CHOREOGRAPHIES

3rd Year

In the third year of study, the work on movement is realized on two fronts: on one hand, the creative and compositional aspect is applied to different theatrical languages with the creation of choreographies inserted into the settings of the respective interpretative style (tragic, melodramatic, buffoonish, surreal, etc.) and with theater dance which combines technique, expressive capacity, improvisation ability, and the capacity to narrate through the language of the body; on the other hand, the bodily expression, now mature and conscious, delves into the search for technical and mimetic virtuosities, from the stylization to the abstraction of movement, up to the reproduction, with the sole means of the body, of video-cinematographic special effects.

 

FELDENKRAIS METHOD

The Feldenkrais method is a method devised by the scientist, physicist, and engineer Moshe Feldenkrais. It is fundamentally based on becoming aware of one's own motor patterns and consists of sequences of simple movements involving every part of the body. Through deep listening to the sensations that movements arouse, students learn to perceive and correct their own postural imbalances and experience the “economic movement” driven not by muscular force but by the body's own weight and the dynamics of movement, thus improving their coordination and fluidity.

• Study of the spiral
• Postural visualization
• Engine and development of movement
• Movement and development in space
• Exercises of the Feldenkrais Method
• Movement paths

 

MUSIC AND CHORAL SINGING DISCIPLINES

3rd Year

The theoretical study of music is addressed through its development from antiquity to the birth of polyphony; from the chanson de geste of the troubadours to the innovations of the 15th and 16th centuries that led to the birth of melodrama, opera, which has made Italy famous all over the world and from which the formula of the Anglo-Saxon musical was shaped; through the great authors of the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods, we reach the stylistic innovations of the 20th century. Alongside the theoretical study, the practice of choral singing is addressed: starting from the division of voices into four sections (soprano, alto, tenor, bass), the techniques of choral singing and the relationship between the sections (canons, second voice) and between soloist and choir are learned.

CHORAL SINGING

• Formation of the four choral sections: soprano, alto, tenor, bass
• Choral exercises
• Canons and second voice
• The gospel
• The relationship between soloist and choir

 

HISTORY OF THEATRICAL THEORIES

3rd Year

The study of Contemporary Theater History, in the 3rd year, goes hand in hand with that of Historical Avant-gardes (futurism, dadaism, surrealism, etc.) from which new forms of theater emerge: the Theater of Cruelty by Antonin Artaud, the Epic dramaturgy of Bertolt Brecht, the Theater of the Absurd by Luigi Pirandello, Samuel Beckett, and Eugène Ionesco, which change the approach to staging, a path already opened by Jean Cocteau, Robert Musil, and Henrik Ibsen. Among others, for originality stands out Alfred Jarry, the inventor of the character of Ubu Roi.
On one side, we find the innovative experimentation of authors active in the Weimar Republic: Brecht, Mayakovsky, Piscator, and Lorca. On the other, the pedagogy of Konstantin Stanislavsky and his students, Meyerhold above all, will bring the director's figure to the center of attention in the experience of the Moscow Art Theater. The word-based theater shifts its focus to the physical and interpretative action of the actor and methods are developed that emphasize the actor's identification with the character (Stanislavsky's method later elaborated by Lee Strasberg) and the sense of play, presence, and listening on stage (Jacques Lecoq's method).
The birth of cinema and especially its historical evolution, from the Lumière Brothers' cinematograph to Georges Méliès' fiction cinema, from narrative cinema to the latest frontiers of digital techniques, has marked a strong synergy between the ancient live scenic art and the “new” form of representation which over the years has produced notable artistic fruits and is still fertile today.
In the '60s and '70s, theater takes cues and gets contaminated with the Eastern tradition, yoga, martial arts, spiritual disciplines. The actor's training path is conceived as personal growth. Also in Italy, from the post-war period to today, director's theater develops with significant figures like Eduardo and Strehler. The director's role, taking precedence over the figure of the lead actor “mattatore,” will determine the very structure of a show and the type of interpretation required from actors. The influence of these masters on the post-war theatrical movement and on the creation of “groups” is significant, just think of the Odin Teatret by Eugenio Barba, the Poor Theater by Jerzy Grotowski, the denunciatory theater of the Living Theatre by Julian Beck and Judith Malina, up to the applications of the Actor's Studio by Lee Strasberg.
Research theater and open-air theater arise from the experience of work and training techniques of "theatrical groups" from the '70s and have evolved to our days, nourishing from the contaminations of languages and technological innovations of new media.

• The Avant-garde Theater: Jarry, Cocteau, Artaud
• The Theater of the Absurd: Ionesco, Beckett, Pirandello
• The Epic and Social Theater: Brecht, Boal, Kantor
• Director's Theater, pioneers and founders: Stanislavsky, Craig, Appia, Copeau, Meyerhold
• Director's Theater of the post-war period: De Filippo, Strehler, Visconti, Fassbinder, Dürrenmatt
• Theatrical criticism

 

OPEN AIR THEATER / MANIPULATION AND ACTING WITH OBJECTS / SCENOGRAPHY AND USE OF OBJECTS

3rd Year

Under the name of Open Air Theater, theatrical representation is enriched with new languages: moving scenographies, video projections, and abstractions. The different techniques and expressive modalities give life to a visual language of strong impact, capable of dialoguing with people of all ages, ethnicities, and cultures, and reaching an international audience. The shows involve the combined use of machinery, large moving objects, fireworks, water games, music (also live) and video projections. Video is a tool of great interaction that blends with a dramaturgy created from experimentation, research, and the encounter with different languages: cinema, dance, nano-dance, performance, “bricolage” figure theater (puppets, marionettes, dolls, shadows) and Black Theater. A sort of polyphony of artistic fields narrated in parallel that offers a stimulating creative versatility.

• Writing
• Scenic construction
• Construction of mannequins, humanoids, marionettes, etc.
• Manipulation and micromanipulation
• Experimentation with materials (fabrics, recycled objects, plants, etc.)
• Site-specific performances

A fundamental component for staging is the relationship between the actor, the scenic space (two or three-dimensional, realistic, symbolic, abstract) and the use of elements and objects present in the space. From the relationship between actor, space, and objects, indeed, the assembly of theatrical scenes is created that characterizes the stylistic signature of the direction. It's necessary to start with a basic knowledge of theatrical structures. The setting and configuration that the director imagines for the theatrical "box" determine an initial form of contextualization of the staging and define, through the visual impact alone, the critical or ironic message, the willingness to adhere to a philological representation or not, and the poetics of the images. The direction of the actor is related to the scenic component in a perspective of conformity (philological scenography - realistic acting) or opposition (symbolic scenography - realistic acting or realistic scenography - absurd acting). The use of stage objects and their manipulation are expressions of the dramaturgical fabric intended by the director.

• Scenic architecture
• History of the theatrical building
• The theatrical box
• History of art and scenography
• Scenography techniques
• Manipulation and acting with objects
• Movable elements in space
• Moving scenographies: fabrics, bamboo, ropes, metal, cardboard, barrels
• Drawn scenographies, cartoonish, in volume, in movement, in transformation
• The manipulator and "the special effect"
• Creation of story and fantastic settings
• The body and object in poetic relation - their staging
• Materials and forms, in relation to the text or theatrical dynamics
• Reproduction of the human body: axes, shapes, and colors
• The human mask with recycled materials
• The effect of lights in the dramatic action

ORGANIZATION OF THE SECTOR / PROJECT MANAGEMENT

3rd Year

Transforming a show into an "artistic project" means broadening horizons, imagining collaborations, stakeholders, opportunities that such a project can bring to a territory, an ideal, or a specific audience. To do this, one must apply to the artistic project the phases of creation that characterize any type of project: a planning phase in which objectives and the activities to achieve them are defined; an execution phase, in which the human resources and the financial resources needed for the project are defined, the planned activities are set in motion, and any unforeseen setbacks are addressed; finally, the closure phase of a project in which the results obtained are evaluated.

DIRECTING AND SCREENWRITING

3rd Year

Students practice writing and staging poems, monologues, and narrations, up to the elaboration of a screenplay, writing sketches, and free adaptations of “scenes”, “acts”, up to the synthesis of entire works of the author under consideration. This involves brief stagings that confront students with the directorial aspects of the performance: from selection to cuts of the text, from narrative style to the identification of the most suitable scenic languages to represent it, from the choice of a soundtrack to the scenic setup. This work is supported by research and analysis of different stagings of the same work or works by the same author, both theatrical and television or cinematic, through the projection of archival footage, audiovisual contributions, and historical and documentary reconstructions.

The styles and languages from the beginning of the 20th century to our days are analyzed, from the avant-garde to director's theater, from experimentation to satire, from farcical comedies to surreal ones, and the different directing techniques applied to live performance, cinema, and new media up to the latest integrations with digital techniques are identified. With the support of archival footage, audiovisual contributions, and historical and documentary reconstructions, the stylistic choices, the methods of actor training and direction, and the stagings of the great masters of the 20th century are compared. Following this phase, students experiment with writing and staging free adaptations of works by many authors and original pieces drawn from the environments, themes, and interpretive mechanisms of nonsense, the theater of the absurd, epic, surreal, etc. Students thus experience the task of adapting authors' comedies, the relationship of theater with visual arts, the writing of satirical sketches on social customs, and the virtuous relationship with the image.

• Synthesis, reductions, and staging of an act or work of the authors discussed
• Original writings and stagings: surreal, “absurd”, nonsense, etc.
• Styles and languages of directing
• Directing techniques
• Analysis of a public figure, vocabulary research: imitative and parodic soliloquy
• Analysis of social phenomena: language research, satirical transposition
• Construction of sketches based on the effect of slow motion, zapping, etc.
• Dramatization of the still frame
• Cinematic, television, and multimedia interpretation
• Writings and stagings of “moving pictures”: musical, poetic, and literary associations
• Writings and stagings of short “situation comedies”
• Short film subjects and screenplays
• Screenwriting for short “sit-coms”, shooting, and editing
• Artistic projects of interaction between scenic arts, audio-visual, and digital

PROJECT AND REALIZATION OF A PERSONAL SCREENPLAY AND DIRECTION

The final phase of this path will lead each student to the conception and realization of a personal writing and directing project. Each student, during the dedicated work period, will be the director of their own project, directing a group of 4/6 student/actors. This experience is comprehensive for the student as it provides the opportunity, not only to realize the directing project by experimenting with their own method of directing with the actors at their disposal but also to confront all the artistic aspects that compose the directorial choices: from music to costume, from makeup to scenography, from lighting to the relationship with the audience.

The directing project, accompanied by the teacher, will be articulated in several phases:

1) Presentation and discussion of the project. 2) Methodological Outline. 3) Rehearsals with actors.
4) Intermediate verification. 5) Public presentation. 6) Critique of the work.

• Original writing or free adaptation of theatrical or narrative literature
• Choice of themes: social, psychological, epic narrative, oneiric, contemporary, etc.
• Choice of scenic language, character profiles
• Structure of the screenplay (narrative, action, linear, scenic frames, time jumps, etc.)
• Choice of acting form and scenic movement
• Linear, analogical, surreal, interactive “moving pictures”, etc. directions
• Choice of parts and actor direction
• Coordination of the work group
• The architecture of the space, settings, and choreographies
• Stage music, costumes, scenography
• Refinement of the overall setup

 

PSYCHOLOGY AND THEATRICAL PEDAGOGY

3rd Year

Theatrical pedagogy roots in the innovations brought to the theatrical field by 20th-century director-pedagogues (Stanislavskij, Meyerhold, Vakhtangov, Copeau, Brecht, Grotowski, Brook, Boal, Barba, etc.) within the research theater laboratories of the twentieth century, where the focus shifts from the production of a show to the centrality of the actor, protagonist of a process. Theater meets pedagogy at the moment it places the individual at the center and gives them a voice, when it recovers every single individual with their personality and expressiveness and grows them through a personal journey that is, however, part of a group design.

• Theoretical elements of theater methods and pedagogies
• Pathways of relaxation, breathing, concentration, listening, and interaction between actors
• Study of “theatrical trainings”
• Sensory path: specific sensory preparation, research on circumstances
• Study of the educational path: training, improvisations, settings, situation exercises, text exercises, staging
• Study of comic mechanisms and timings
• Management of a monographic theatrical lesson or with specific educational objectives